


Small

by virgo_rising



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Explicit Language, M/M, Masturbation, Oral Sex, being mean to each other, won't somebody please think of the children
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-08
Updated: 2014-07-24
Packaged: 2018-02-07 22:12:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1915764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/virgo_rising/pseuds/virgo_rising
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Close quarters, fire alarms, clashing personalities. Furthermore, the world is probably going to end soon. There's no time to get along.</p><p>Inspired to finally write some fic by the stupidly talented irisbleufic. Big ups!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“I think about you.”  
“It’s a novelty that you have the capacity for thought at all.”

The “you” faded out. He mouthed it. Hermann only heard the first three words of the sentence. The rest he had mentally filled in the nanoseconds between “you” and silence and his catty response. Honestly, Newt could have easily said “I think about… the expensive foreign toys I scatter randomly around my side of the lab.” Or, “…the fact that I’m a man-child.” Or even – and this one was even less likely – “…my complete insufferable self. I’m sorry. Really I am. I’m going to go to bed early. Goodbye.”  Hermann smirked to himself and Newt flushed. Any continuation of Newt’s humiliation or Hermann’s wild, inaccurate fantasies was interrupted by the sector’s fire alarm. It had gone off six times that day already.

The squad of electricians on hand was dwindling due to severe budget cuts. In an effort to curry the favor of their supervisor, a particularly overzealous member had started changing the batteries in every smoke detector biweekly. His job was intact, but the sanity and patience of the pilots, scientists, engineers, and various Shatterdome ephemera was not. Sadly, this trudge to the outdoor deck on the way-too-high-up-only-accessible-by-stairway-top-level was mandatory. Who knows when a real fire could occur? People were putting metal in microwaves almost constantly – it wouldn’t be inconceivable.

Hermann, swept up in the shuffle of tank-tops and Dickeys work pants lumbering up the stairs, ironically found comfort in the crowd. His weight was off his bad leg with people all around him, carrying him upwards. Little by little, the cool air vented downwards from the open airlock onto his face. Bliss. Further down the steps, a less elated Newt fretted and fidgeted and dawdled among the throng. In the past few weeks, he’d more or less ignored the fire drills and stayed in the lab fucking around with different pieces of kaiju offal. With today’s embarrassment, though, he’d decided he would rather not linger in the place where he’d bared his soul and subsequently gotten clapped the fuck _back_.

On the plus side, his dilly-dallying gave him a moment of introspection away from Hermann. He thought to himself, “You know, maybe he _didn’t_ hear. He probably didn’t hear. He definitely didn’t hear! I barely said it. But how goddamn embarrassing is that… confessing to a crush… that’s like, something out of, I don’t know… _The Baby-Sitters Club_. And not even one of the better books. One of the crappy ones. The ones that they published after the millennium. Not that I read any of them. They were always eye-level in the library, though. And who doesn’t flip through the eye-level books anyway? Even if it’s for chicks.” His scattered soliloquy was cut short by the sight of people quickly angling themselves away from the landing. It was a false alarm, of course. “It’s always a false alarm.”


	2. Chapter 2

“Fall back!” “Honestly?” “Again?” “I’m going to fucking sleep. It’s been, like, a month since the last event.” “Right? When are we ever even going to need these things?” The thin skin behind Herman’s kneecap began throbbing, and so did his temples. Taking his cane in the opposite hand, Hermann rubbed his closed eyeballs until purple and green neon fractals manifested. The curtain had fallen on his happy suspension in midair, and it was back to real life. It was back to walking down the steps with a splitting headache trying not to wedge the tip of his cane in between the wide iron grates beneath his feet. Meanwhile, in the swarming company of personnel, a mop of brown hair kept twisting itself Hermann’s way. Green eyes flashed in the gradually fading light leaking from the open door behind them. They would snap his way, then widen, then he would suddenly be fascinated by something on the wall. While it was entirely possible that that particular Mexico-shaped crack in the drywall had honestly caught Newt’s attention, he was definitely staring at Hermann. He was staring at Hermann over and over again. He’d left his reading glasses behind at the lab, but against the ultra-pale masses, it was easy to tell that Newt was flushed. The unofficial motto of the Shatterdome, after all, was “Nobody’s Free To Wear Sunscreen”. Even during successfully executed fire drills, the Hong Kong pollution hid any and all traces of the sun.

But Newt was looking at him! Moreover, he was looking at him _bashfully_. Hermann noticed that while everyone in the hall was chattering away, Newt was silent. With no partner for banter (Hermann mentally redacted this: with no _brick wall_ for his _inane ramblings_ ) and his mouth shut, his mandible was utterly still. Newt’s stubble was reduced to five o'clock shadow and the pink in the apples of his cheeks accentuated the tightness of his jawline.

The green of his eyes contrasted with the red of his face and it was enchanting. It was enchanting and bewitching and delightful and beguiling and synonyms synonyms synonyms and he stopped dead in the middle of the stairs. Someone behind him accidentally kicked the cane out from under his hand. Hermann wobbled a bit but gripped the railing at the last second. He steadied himself. Newt looked up the stairs – the clatter of wood on steel signified Hermann and was not at all unfamiliar. Hermann looked down the stairs. Newt was still looking up.

The man behind Hermann said, “I’m sorry” and Hermann sat down as the swarm formed a current around his body.


	3. Chapter 3

In every dormitory there was a PA system specifically for sector-wide and Shatterdome-wide announcements. On each wall there was also an off-white plastic handset beside a twelve-digit keypad. With any three numbers punched in followed by the pound key, one could reach anyone at any time in any room in the complex. When Hermann and Newt first moved into the lab, two sticky notes had been placed on either of their computer monitors.

HERMANN GOTTLEIB: 586#

NEWTON GEISZLER: 012#

Over the X number of years the two had worked together, the notes hadn’t moved. The adhesive was long worn off, but in apparent gesture to turn the laboratory into more of a space of permanence; each man had taped his notes back up. As much as the numbers were a part of their everyday lives, toiling away amid the stink of formaldehyde and glare of computer screens, neither Hermann nor Newt had called one another from their bunks.

The din had died down to whispers here and there from the hallway, dining room, sparring gyms, conversation echoing off the metal walls and bouncing through the hammer, anvil, stirrup. The compound was back to work at warding off the next attack, and so Hermann was at his chalkboard and Newt at the slab. As he made checkmarks of varying sizes – this one for long division, that one for a root, and one that actually served a checkmark’s intended purpose (“ _Pick up slacks from DryClean, 347#”_ ), Hermann cleared his throat.

Newt’s cluttered digs would be indistinguishable from his side of the lab if it weren’t for the twin bed, the bathroom, and the phone on the wall. He glanced at the clock. It was Western-style, for military time had never agreed with him. “There’s no such thing as 13-o’clock. It’s one. Just call it what it is. It’s one! One in the afternoon.” He had said this after a few beers to some of the Chinese engineers one afternoon. They ignored him. At the moment, it was 2248 hours. To Newt, it was 11:48 at night. The phone rang. Puzzled, he answered.

“Hello?”

“Well, that was unpleasant, wasn’t it?”

Newt dropped the phone in shock. “What was?” Oh, god, it better not had been the—

“The fire alarm. These drills are more irritating than the hideous scraping cacophony the door makes.”

It wasn’t Newt’s thought from before? It wasn’t his attempt at a profession of his lust? It was about the fucking _beeping_?

Hermann continued, “And, you know, I, ah, saw you from up the stairs. I do understand that you were working on a rather important dissection earlier today, and I, well, wasn’t really listening to you, and – this is no excuse for my rudeness, really – but this equation has been giving me trouble all day and the alarm did not help one, tiny bit. So I heard you say something, and I assumed it was maybe a snipe at me. Which was unfair.”

At this point in Hermann’s run-on apology, Newt imagined Hermann was speaking with his free hand in a very Italian manner.

“And I snapped at you. I shouldn’t have done that, and when I saw your face on the stairs, you seemed so upset. And I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

 

 

Several beats later, Newt responded, “It’s ok. Thanks for calling.” He hung up and ran to the sink in his bathroom. Letting the water run just long enough for it to become freezing cold, he shoved his whole head into the metal basin, letting the rushing water run through his hair and drip through his eyelashes onto his nose and chin.

They say that cold water tempers arousal. This is a fallacy perpetuated by pseudo-science throughout the ages. Blood runs hotter than shower water, so to take a cold shower in order to subdue a boner triggered by an unexpected phone call would be akin to drinking a cup of tea to cure hypothermia. Newt shot a withering gaze down at his crotch. Speaking to his dick as if it was a roommate who hadn’t done the dishes, he hissed, “I can’t believe you.”

Shifting his eyes from wall to wall in the bathroom as if someone could be hiding in the shower, he shuffled to the door, slammed it, and shut the lights off. He took a deep breath and cracked his knuckles. Muscle memory took hold and his pants were unzipped, his cock pulled through his boxers.


	4. Chapter 4

Jesus, he was hard. He gave his cock a tentative squeeze, almost as if to wake himself up from a horrible (?) nightmare. The skin around the column of his dick slid easily up and down with the movement of his calloused palm and fingertips and he found himself fully engorged with blood. With just that one touch, precum leaked from the tip of his dick in obscenely copious amounts. Newt had already raised his left hand to his mouth, subconsciously preparing to spit on it. He lowered it; he realized very quickly that additional lubricant was not needed. He let go of himself and squinted at himself in the mirror. Even with the dim light seeping through the doorjamb, it was easy to tell that his face was flushed with anticipation. He turned away – “I’m not about to look at myself in the mirror while I rub one out,” he said to Tendo one night after some heavy drinking and oversharing – and grasped himself with a bit more conviction this time. He shakily sat on the edge of the bathtub, slowly but firmly moving his hand up and down his erection. “Oh, god,” he whispered to the empty, humid room. “Oh, Jesus. Fucking—ah!” His index finger grazed the sensitive area between the glans and his shaft. Letting go, he breathed heavily through the unanticipated shock of arousal that lit up every single nerve ending. He took hold of himself again. This would be over far too quickly, and he knew why. It was Hermann. He pressed the tip of his finger to the head of his dick, smearing the fluid there around agonizingly slowly. It was Hermann, it was his long legs and the small of his back that was very, very rarely revealed when he reached too high up on the chalkboard. The creamy skin, unblemished, probably was soft and tender and maybe a little bony but good god it would feel good under his hands. His already tenacious grasp on his dick tightened further and he began to masturbate in earnest. That skin. That skin under his hands. The way Hermann’s hipbones would feel in the spaces between Newt’s fingers. Hermann’s hair… his fucking elementary school haircut disheveled into a sweaty, matted, mess. The way his dark hair would cling to his milky white forehead, looking back at Newt as he thrust over and over and over into Hermann’s fucking warm, wet tightness. Hermann looking back at him, quietly saying “Newt, Newt, oh Newt…” 

Newt brushed his frenulum and it was over. The first wave of ejaculate spilled over his fingers as he sharply inhaled. With short, quiet exclamations of “Ah! Ah!” his cum ran down his jeans and shot onto the tiled floor. 

In another room, not too far away, Hermann shut his eyes against the rough cotton of his pillowcase. He thought only of Newt’s forearms.

**Author's Note:**

> july 23: SMUT finally
> 
> comments/crit always welcome
> 
> http://storeboughtisfine.tumblr.com/


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